Related papers: The Road to Precision Cosmology

An emerging theme in modern astrophysics is the connection between astronomical observations and the underlying physical phenomena that drive our cosmos. Both the mechanisms responsible for the observed astrophysical phenomena and the tools…

Scientific cosmology has now reached its period of maturity with the establishment of a standard model, which is the theory of an expanding universe. The question of whether this expansion resolves itself, in the past, into a singularity…

Cosmology is the dot com of the sciences. Boom or bust. It is about nothing less than the origin and evolution of the Universe, the all of everything. It is the boldest of enterprises and not for the fainthearted. Cosmologists are the…

The age of the Universe at a given redshift is a fundamental relationship in cosmology. For many years, the uncertainties in it were dauntingly large, close to a factor of 2. In this age of precision cosmology, they are now at the percent…

We demonstrate that as we extrapolate the current $\Lambda$CDM universe forward in time, all evidence of the Hubble expansion will disappear, so that observers in our "island universe" will be fundamentally incapable of determining the true…

The past fifty years have been an epoch of impressive progress in the field of astronomical technology. Practically all the technical tools, which we use today, have been developed during that time span. While the first half of this period…

For two decades the hot big-bang model as been referred to as the standard cosmology -- and for good reason. For just as long cosmologists have known that there are fundamental questions that are not answered by the standard cosmology and…

Over the past century, rooted in the theory of general relativity, cosmology has developed a very successful physical model of the universe: the {\em big-bang model}. Its construction followed different stages to incorporate nuclear…

After briefly reviewing the good agreement between large-scale observations and the predictions of the now-standard CDM theory and problems with the MOND alternative, I summarize several of the main areas of possible disagreement between…

A brief review of the present-day development of cosmology is presented for mixed physical audience. The universe history is briefly described. Unsolved problems are discussed, in particular, the mystery of the cosmological constant and…

The discovery of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) in 1964 by Penzias and Wilson led to the establishment of the hot big-bang cosmological model some ten years later. Discoveries made in 1998 may ultimately have as profound an effect on…

The history of astrometry, the branch of astronomy dealing with the positions of celestial objects, is a lengthy and complex chronicle, having its origins in the earliest records of astronomical observations more than two thousand years…

The paradigm of \Lambda CDM cosmology works impressively well and with the concept of inflation it explains the universe after the time of decoupling. However there are still a few concerns; after much effort there is no detection of dark…

The state of our understanding of cosmology is reviewed from an astrophysical cosmologist point of view with a particular emphasis given to recent observations and their impact. Discussion is then presented on the implications for particle…

In the past several decades, the standard cosmological model has been established and its parameters have been measured to a high precision, while there are still many of the fundamental questions in cosmology; such as the physics in the…

For more than a half century cosmologists have been guided by the assumption that matter is distributed homogeneously on sufficiently large scales. On the other hand, observations have consistently yielded evidence for inhomogeneity in the…

A huge amount of good quality data converges towards the picture of a spatially flat universe undergoing the today observed phase of accelerated expansion. This new observational trend is commonly addressed as Precision Cosmology. Despite…

Although the current galaxy models yield calculations consistent with much of the data, many irregularities exist, exceptions have been found to the current models, the $\Lambda$CDM model apparently fails on galaxy scales, dark matter…

Understanding the behavior of the universe at large depends critically on insights about the smallest units of matter and their fundamental interactions. Inflationary cosmology is a highly successful framework for exploring these…

Planck will be the first mission to map the entire cosmic microwave background (CMB) sky with mJy sensitivity and resolution better than 10'. The science enabled by such a mission spans many areas of astrophysics and cosmology. In…